In recent years it has become known that the juice of cherries contains a number of ingredients, which have a beneficial health effect. Thus cherry juice has been found to contain a number of valuable antioxidants and related compounds that have anti-inflammatory properties. In particular tart cherries of the Montmorency variety have been found to be rich in anthocyanins and other organic constituents, which have been shown to have beneficial health effects. Anthocyanins have been found to reduce size of varicose veins. Recent studies have shown that antioxidant compounds in cherries are ten times stronger than aspirin or ibuprofen in relieving pain. Daily consumption of cherries or cherry juice has been shown to ease the pain of arthritis, headaches and even gout. Researchers have also discovered that cherries are packed with perillyl alcohol, a natural chemical that not only flushes cancer-causing substances out of the body, but also helps stunt the growth of cancerous cells. Perillyl alcohol is so powerful, it can slash the incidence of cancer by as much as 50 percent Melatonin is another powerful anitoxidant contained in cherries that acts on problems mentioned above as well as improving the natural sleep pattern of the human body.
It is impractical from a standpoint of commercially utilizing cherries as a nutraceutical product to either dry the fresh cherries as such or to simply extract the juice from the cherries, although such products do find utility as food and beverage products. Thus it is commercially necessary to produce a concentrated juice containing a high percentage of the ingredients benefiting human health. There are various factors, which make the concentration of cherry juice a problem. Thus the juice from conventional tart cherries, and particularly Montmorency cherries, contains an enzyme {believed to be polyphenyloxidase}, which contributes to poor flavor and color instability of its juice. Although the enzyme obviously needs to be removed for a commercially viable product, heating the juice, which causes the enzyme to decompose, also causes the antioxidants and other organic components to degrade and lose some of their efficacy. There is therefore a need to provide a method of concentrating cherry juice, which separates the undesirable enzymes and also concentrates cherry juice to a concentration at which it finds commercial utility as a nutraceutical without decomposing the antioxidants and other beneficial components contained in cherries.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,708 discloses a method of preparing a concentrated cherry juice of improved flavor by a freezing and thawing process. The resulting product, although useful as a food additive or beverage, does not have a high enough concentration of the nutraceutical components of cherry juice to serve the purpose of a nutraceutical product.